one, moreover, in regard to which the Church had so definitely declared the law of absolute secrecy. It is stated by some, among others by the Commissioners appointed to report upon the ecclesiastical courts in their report published in 1883, that the ecclesiastical courts in England did not regard themselves as bound by the rules of canon law framed by the Church outside England, by the various papal decrees, rescripts etc. But the Commissioners add that these courts paid great respect and attention to these rules, decrees etc. There seems to be so much weighty evidence against this view that it is difficult to accept it. Sir Frederick Pollock and Professor Frederic William Maitland in their joint History of English Law (I, 94 and 95) say that the jus commune or common law of the universal Church was the law of the Church in England. In this connexion important material is contained in the Provinciale of William Lyndwood (Oxford, 1679), arguably the only great English canonist. The Provinciale The Provinciale consists of the provincial constitutions of fourteen Archbishops of Canterbury from Stephen Langton (d. 1228) to Henry Chichele (d. 1443). When Lyndwood was engaged on this compilation he was the principal official of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He had been, also, the prolocutor of the clergy in the Convocation of Canterbury. Maitland, in his essays on Roman Canon Law in the Church of England, expresses the opinion that the ecclesiastical courts in England regarded the general body of canon law, including the various papal decrees and rescripts and the commentaries of the various great writers, as their law, which they had to administer. In citing Lyndwood as providing grounds for this opinion Maitland says: "At any rate he will state the law which he administers in the chief of all the English ecclesiastical courts". In the Provinciale there is a constitution of "Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury", apparently Walter Reynolds, transferred from the See of Worcester in 1313. The constitution begins with a prohibition to priests who have fallen into mortal sin to say mass without first going to confession and warning them against imagining, as some believers erroneously do, that mortal sins are forgiven by the general confession made in the recitation of the Confiteor. It continues as follows: Lyndwood on confession Lyndwood gives the following commentary on Walter Reynolds' constitution, occurring upon the word "Confession": Dealing with the priest's